


Goodbye to Nightmares

by AriadneBeckett (Jet44)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Brotherly Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e15 The Benders, Gen, Hugs, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25751527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jet44/pseuds/AriadneBeckett
Summary: The worst parts of The Benders are the ones they barely acknowledged on screen. Sam and Dean help each other through the aftermath of what didn't happen.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 94





	Goodbye to Nightmares

Sam rested his hand on the bathroom door, his skin crawling and his gut in full-on revolt. The motel shower splattered away in there, with his brother in it, just like it had ten minutes ago. Just like it had twenty minutes ago.

He let his hand drop, and sat on his bed for the tenth time, staring at the door. Dean couldn’t hide that he was hunching his shoulder in on itself. Couldn’t hide singed clothing and the smell of burned flesh. Couldn’t hide his milk-white face, or the way his body shivered in shock. Stubborn jerk refused to tell him a word about what happened, just, “I’m fine, Sammy, let it go.”

Screw it. Sam levered himself up for the eleventh time, desperate to know if Dean was even conscious in there, desperate for company. Far worse things had happened to him than being locked in a cage by a bunch of inbred hicks. He was more than used to playing third fiddle in an orchestra that couldn’t decide if it loved him or wished it could leave him with a supply of pizza delivery in a Kansas roadside motel until he got big enough to be useful instead of a liability.

Sam was a full-grown adult now, and still a liability. He’d let himself get captured by human beings of all things, and Dean found him, because of course he did. And now Dean’s scream wouldn’t leave his ears.

“Dean!”

Trapped in a cage, heart pounding, he hung on every sound, until the worst possible sound pierced through the still air. And yes, he could identify his big brother by his scream, and no, he didn’t want to contemplate how he knew that. Imagining what might have forced that sound from Dean's throat, wondering if it was the last time he would hear his brother....

“Fine doesn’t take showers for twenty minutes straight!” Sam jiggled the knob. “In one minute, I’m coming in or calling an ambulance, my choice unless you wanna chime in about it.”

No answer. Cold lanced through his chest, freezing time. He flung the door open, images of Dean dead in the shower flashing through his mind.

Dean wasn’t in the shower anymore. He sat on the closed toilet lid in clean boxers and white t-shirt, sobbing with his face in his hands, chest heaving. He snapped his head up, staring at Sam through red tear-flooded eyes, dropping his hands to reveal a spreading red and yellow blotch staining the chest of his shirt. His temple was split open and puffy, and rope welts marked his wrists.

“I’m sorry,” blurted Sam, desperately worried that this would be the moment Dean would just be done with him. He was responsible for all of this, and now he’d burst in on Dean at the worst moment. He should leave. He’d always dragged them down and needed rescuing and feeding and taking care of, and even growing up didn’t change that. Whatever had caused that scream looked horrific even through a shirt. He needed a hospital, and it was all Sam’s fault.

Dean stood abruptly and launched himself at Sam, who tried not to flinch as all hundred and eighty pounds of muscle-and-fury Dean Winchester came straight at him and tackled him into a hug as all-encompassing as the sun.

#

Dean’s entire body shook. He shivered, cold from shock, burning throughout his body from the wound in his chest, and none of the water in the world could fix it. He’d tried hot to warm up and cold to soothe the burn and every bit of pressure in the pipes to erase the sight of Sam in a cage.

Not just any cage, a real one. An effective one, one Dean couldn’t even open from the outside. He wanted to scrub the intensity of that moment from the depths of his brain, that moment when he realized there was no physically breaking Sam out of there, that he would have to _leave his brother behind those welded bars_.

But that was gonna have to wait until he forgot the sensation of having his entire being kicked in the balls when that gunshot rang out. It was gonna have to wait until he could force himself to let go of Sam, standing there confused and worried and soft and alive.

An awkward hand found its home on the back of his shoulder blade and gave him a timid pat. Sammy must be the kinda guy they invented the term gentle giant for. Dean tried to pull away, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t let Sam see his face, he couldn’t just stand there and sob in front of his little brother, hell, he couldn’t even face himself right now.

“Dean.” Sam’s voice sounded soft and whispery. “Dean, you need a hospital.”

“I can’t,” admitted Dean. _I can’t handle a hotel bathroom, how am I gonna face a hospital? I thought I heard you die_.

“Come on.”

Dean didn’t even see the room as Sam steered him to a bed and made him lie down on his side. He kept his eyes closed while Sam cut his shirt and tried to block out Sam’s quiet gasp of horror.

“What happened? What did this?”

“Is it bad?” Dean hadn’t been able to get himself to look at it too close. The throbbing pain ran right through his chest and twisted up his gut and bored down his legs. He hadn’t known it possible for one little wound to hurt this bad and _keep_ hurting, and it scared him. He was in shock, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

“Not, ‘you’re gonna die’ bad,” said Sam. “But definitely, ‘holy shit, you need a doctor’ bad.”

“I—don’t wanna,” said Dean. He was resigned to shaking and crying in front of Sam, because he was nothing if not a realist. But if they went to a hospital, they’d think it was weird if he refused to let his giant little brother out of his sight because creepy rednecks might get him.

He curled his legs up to his stomach and clenched his toes, trying to drive away the pain, wishing it was only in his chest and not snaking through his body where it had no right to be. He needed to lie here, and sense Sam alive, and ideally go to sleep and wake up and find it all better.

“What did this?” Sam asked again.

“A—poker. They stabbed me in the chest with a red-hot poker, and they were gonna take my eye out, and they made me choose - Sammy—Sammy, I thought they killed you–"

“You need morphine,” said Sam, still using that whisper-soft voice. “Hospitals have morphine.”

None of the drugs he’d choked down were working, and they had some kick-ass drugs. In the shock and horror and suspended grief and pain, he’d forgotten morphine even existed. It sounded nice.

“If—if I go, will you stay with me?” asked Dean. “If they put me under, will you be there when I wake up?”

#

Sam had managed not to cry when he saw Dean’s chest looking like someone stabbed him with a hot poker, only to find out that was exactly what had happened. He even managed not to cry, watching his brother tremble in pain.

_Will you be there when I wake up?_

Tears pooled in his eyes, and he couldn’t stop them. “What do you mean? This is all my fault, and I’m so sorry-"

“I thought they killed you!” The sheer rage and grief in Dean’s voice did something to him, deep inside his heart. Dean wasn’t pissed that Sam had gotten caught. Dean wasn’t pissed that he was in agony and shock right now because Sam had needed rescuing.

“I heard that gunshot and—and I thought you were gone, Sammy. In my head I’m telling myself all the ways it’s fine, you’re fine, it’s not you, and I imagined you dead on the floor and–"

Dean loved him and was grieving the fact that he thought he’d lost him? Sam tried to blink away his tears to no avail and realized Dean was looking right at him with desperate worry.

“Don’t leave me,” said Dean. “Please don’t leave me.”

“You’d be better off without me.”

“NO! No, I damn well wouldn’t, and that’s why I ain’t going to any hospital. Forget it. Not letting you out of my sight.”

Sam knelt down beside the bed, grabbed his shoulders, and tried to pull him in close for an awkward, teary hug. Dean cooperated with far too much ferocity.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” said Sam for what seemed like the tenth time that night. But now, it wasn’t a personal apology. It expressed grief for what Dean had suffered, and that felt—a lot better. Like something they could recover from. It felt like it would be okay.

“I’m sorry too, Sammy,” said Dean, letting out a massive, whole body sigh of relief. “It’s gonna be okay, all right? We’re gonna be okay.”

“Yes, we are,” said Sam, closing his eyes and just relishing the warm contact for a minute.

And that was when he realized Dean wasn’t shaking anymore.

“We made it.” They both spoke at once, the same words in unison, and their resulting snickers made the world snap back onto its axis.

“What do we even tell the doctors?” asked Dean, a certain levity in his voice. “Burn-y midnight fencing accident?”

“Snowball fight with hot coals?” suggested Sam.

“Crazy hicks wanted to make wind chimes from my jawbone?” Dean’s eyes were twinkling now through the glaze of pain and former tears.

“Bigfoot didn’t want to share his s’mores and got stabby?” Sam almost regretted the suggestion when Dean burst out laughing, his fists tightening in pain. Almost.

“We are so telling them that!” said Dean, sitting up with a smirk.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize that this isn't a new chapter of That One Time in Idaho, which is very much not abandoned. The pandemic stole my muse, and this is the first time it's given the thing back for as much as a second. Better something than nothing, right?


End file.
